Recollections of My Life as a Woman Read-Alikes

At age 10, Steve Martin got a job selling guidebooks at the newly opened Disneyland. In the decade that followed, he developed his own magic/comedy act. By age 20, studying poetry and philosophy on the side, he was performing a dozen times a week, including in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. This book is an illuminating guidebook to stand-up from one of our greatest comedians.

Born in San Francisco just before the Summer of Love, Clane Hayward grew up on hippie communes throughout the west. Her poignantly funny, sometimes melancholy, and always riveting memoir recounts her extraordinary life up until her 13th birthday. The Hypocrisy of Disco is an honest, direct, and truly unforgettable tale, and a tribute to the resilience of youth.

In her engaging memoir, novelist Vandenburgh tells of her dysfunctional Protestant family, scrappy 1950s childhood, rebellious adolescence, and turbulent Southern California upbringing with two brothers, flamboyant father and crazy mother. The final part of her memoir deals with her adulthood in Berkeley, California, and her romance with a local book publisher.

Charismatic, beautiful Sally Flynn was the center of her daughters’ imaginations, particularly Laura’s. Without warning, life as they knew it changed as paranoid schizophrenia overtook Sally. Glimmers of her mother’s future paranoia grew brighter as Laura’s early years passed. Set in 1970s San Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is a searing, beautifully written memoir of a childhood under siege.